Shaping Cont...

DAY 4
Today I hoped would be the final day spent on FR1/initial shaping. During the time period of 25:13 she pressed the bar 114 times while I administered 5 by myself to get her going at the beginning. She did achieve over 50 reinforcements by herself but only because I got her started.

DAY 5
I decided to go one more day on the FR1 since during the last training session I had to administer some rewards, this time I wanted her to do them all by herself. After 27:50 she pressed the bar 151 times by herself. For the next training day I will be moving her up to the next schedule since she achieved the minimum of 50!

Heres a pic of Jubes getting her reward!!

Shaping Jubilee!

The goal was now to shape Jubilee further to press the bar in order to receive food

DAY 2
Today I trained for 28:43 and she slowly started to catch on. In the time period she pressed the level 5 times while I rewarded her 75 times. Jubilee frequently put her paws on the level but did not push down hard enough to trigger a reward. She would put her paws up on the bar and just stand there looking for a reward, so I eventually had to stop rewarding the behavior of just putting her paws on it and force her to become a little frustrated and express more behavior. She eventually started pushing harder but not enough to associate it with the reward. These actions of putting her paws on the lever or going to that area and then looking for food in the hopper proved to me that she was magazine trained and her behavior was being shaped.

DAY 3
I continued with training Jubilee on the FR 1 schedule. I trained for about 27 minutes and I administered 58 rewards while she pressed the bar 14 times on her own. She has quite an unconventional way of pressing the lever though, the likes to shove her nose to the back and push with her whole head and face. She will do this every time she goes to push the bar instead of finding a way to push with her paws. Sometimes she will try to chew and nibble on the bar before she pushes it, but eventually she will stick her nose and face on the bar and push it down to get food. Hopefully she is not going to become conditioned to a behavior chain where she nibbles and then push it down. If this does occur I will have to find a way to extinct this behavior.

Magazine Training

The goal was to magazine train Jubilee to the sounds and actions that cause the release of food from the hopper.

Previous to magazine training we deprived Jubilee to 85% percent of their original weight and two days before the first training session we introduced sugar pellets into their diet. Both of these steps were taken in order to insure motivation and that the reward would be familiar and recognized as normal food.

DAY 1 
The first day we (Dr. Trench and I) sat and slowly magazine trained Jubilee so that every time she went near the particular corner or the lever, i manually pushed the button and a reward released. We magazine trained for about 22 minutes and during that time I pressed the lever 40 times and she did not self reward at all.

She seemed to be very interested in the parts of the cage and in particular one corner of the floor. She spent a lot of time focused in and biting on the metal wires of the floor. This is what prevented from more continuous shaping although she was giving a decent amount of other behavior.

Training Sniffy, The virtual rat

The goal of this task was to become prepared to train our live rat by first training a rat on a computer software called "Sniffy".  The first step was to magazine train sniffy, or classically condition the rat to the sound and the appearance of food. This prepared Sniffy to be shaped to press the bar and eventually put him on a training schedule.

Here is Sniffy, the computer program!

After Sniffy developed an association between the sound of the bar and the dispensing of food, I then began shaping Sniffy. This consisted of gradually reinforcing behaviors that resembled bar pressing, and eventually only rewarding for rearing up at the back wall by the dispenser. Soon enough, Sniffy started rearing more often right at the bar and would sometimes accidentally press the bar. For each time after that, the only time Sniffy received reinforcement was after a bar press. Sniffy soon caught on and would press the bar multiple times in a row.

When Sniffy was shaped, I switched him to a Variable Ratio schedule of 5. This means that sniffy only received reinforcement after a certain measured amount of behavior, such as a varied ratio of 5 bar presses. After I put the rat on the schedule, I noticed that the bar pressing was much more rapid and almost aggressive.

I then continued with extinction, or making sniffy forget the training. This means that the rat received no reinforcement at all after a bar press. He showed a very rapid extinction burst, he would press the bar very rapidly trying to get to food, up to 200 presses per minute. This lasted for about 5 minutes. Eventually, the training became extinct and sniffy no longer pressed the bar more than he did previous to the training.

I started and finished all of this training within 3 hours! I used the computer programs setting where you can "speed up time" to increase shaping behaviors, instead of waiting in real time.

After using this program I feel much more confident in training my live rat. I will probably practice with the program a few more times to gain some more confidence, and get more used to proper shaping techniques, but I feel I am ready to go live!

My first training day is today with my live rat, whose name I decided is Jubilee (Jubes), just because! (I really needed a name, so I decided to go with the most entertaining one.)

First Lab!

First off, I was so excited to start this class and get to meet my rat. Like most people, I cannot stand rats if they're in my house, but I couldn't wait to start working with these ones! Its nice to finally have a lab where we get to work with live animals, and keep them alive.. I am definitely tired of all the fetal pigs, turtles, and frogs from biology labs.
 Initially, I was a little nervous to start holding them just because I was afraid I was going to drop my rat, but mine ended up being pretty calm to start off with. She is super curious and is constantly sniffing everything, so I am still a little afraid I might drop her because she likes to crawl up me!

Here she is!

And again.. trying to crawl up me..

As I went into the lab today I found that Devons rats had pulled a lab coat almost all the way into their cage and decided to have a snack. Hopefully it wont hurt them too much, but I definitely learned that even though they are lab bred rats, they are still rats and will chew anything.

I am still super excited to start working with them and I have been trying to think of a name since last week. Here are my options..

Matilda
Boots

Suzie (thanks Alex)

Jubes, short for Jubilee

This last one is an inside joke with my volleyball team. This past weekend we played a girl named Jubilee Haase, and made up the loving nickname of Jubes.. Of course I still can't decide on a name.. HELP!